Barbara Ehrenreich Calls BS on the Immortality Industry

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It seems that staying alive and young and active has become a duty and a responsibility each of us ignores at our peril.

In her new book, Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying and Our Illusion of Control, Barbara Ehrenreich reminds us that once we are over 70 we are “old enough to die” and should not make strenuous or unseemly efforts to stay alive. As a young woman, she wanted to be a scientist and wrote her Ph.D. about certain cells that are, apparently, vital to the immune system. Macrophages, she tells us: help sculpt the embryo into a human fetus; they defend the body against microbial invasions; they participate in the process of antigen presentation; they keep the body clear of dead and damaged cells. On the destructive side, they participate in the growth and spread of tumors; they launch the catastrophe of inflammaging; they are frontline killers in autoimmune diseases.

The central chapters of this alarmingly persuasive book enlarge knowledgeably and imaginatively on this news of cellular treachery and its implications. Our bodies are, it seems, sites of permanently warring factions of cells, wayward and possessed—as it were—with minds of their own. They “lunge” and “devour” one another and simply make mistakes, so that our minds and bodies are never to be relied upon to silkily and systematically function. After a certain point, therefore, Ehrenreich insists, we should stop supposing that we can control these cells or the diseases they inflict on us, let alone our ageing. She is “giving up on preventive care,” on tests and monitoring, and she advises us to do the same.

However, the book is not concerned solely with the inevitable depredations of old age. Its scepticism addresses a good deal of what goes on these days within conventional medical practice as well as alongside it. We have been seduced into beliefs that our bodies are our responsibility, that mind controls matter, to such an extent that conventional as well as “alternative” therapies have developed elaborate rituals that often exceed the so-called “primitive” healing rituals we are inclined to mock as magic in parts of the world unconquered by Western medicine. She focuses on some of the rituals surrounding childbirth, such as shaving pubic hair and (I might add) supplying miniature swimming pools. Are white coats and all the versions of “imaging” our mysterious innards really essential to our health and our knowledge about ourselves and our bodies? Do we, as patients, cling to the trappings of modern medicine as evidence that we are being taken seriously?

We are bombarded with questions and warnings about diet and drink and smoking, and ordered to exercise, though not to excess. If we have high blood pressure or “bad” cholesterol it is almost certainly our fault. If we are fat we may not deserve medical treatment at all. Even cancer may be caused, we’re sometimes told, by unwarranted tension and our response to the stresses of contemporary life. The warnings change with the times, but they are always admonishing as well as contradictory. Our duty to our bodies may be thought of as an aspect of Western individualism, and respect for the reality and sanctity of the self.

Ehrenreich takes us on a complex journey through competing theories, which now, and in the past, adjudicated the mind/body relation. They have been philosophical and religious and may nowadays be psychoanalytical. She introduces us to a world of mass-market apps, with names like Simply Being and Buddhify, that promote “positive thinking” and “mindfulness”—mindfulness being only a recent example of dozens of profitable scams that offer to improve our minds and enable them to control our erring bodies.

We are also expected to make sense of statistics that seem to defy our experience. We “know,” for instance, that smoking can cause lung cancer, yet of the 15 or so people I know who have lung cancer or have died of it, only one ever smoked. As Ehrenreich points out, “a 2015 study found that the average adult attention span had shrunk from 12 seconds a dozen years ago to eight seconds, which is shorter than the attention of a goldfish.” What should we make of that as a “fact”?

I don’t suppose Ehrenreich will give up entirely on prevention, and nor will I. She still goes to the gym and I go to the swimming pool. I swallow quite a lot of pills and put drops in my eyes, and I have just acquired a noisy hearing aid I usually leave at home.

I am even older than Ehrenreich, and though in pretty good health, am assailed by the illnesses and deaths of friends who are my age or younger. A dear old friend died a week ago, peacefully, awake and aware and 86, but angry that she’d wasted a precious last year of her life feeling tired and sad from her treatment, which had completely failed to stop her lung cancer spreading to most of her major organs. She accepted her inevitable death with grace and serenity, but regretted that treatment. Ehrenreich would have encouraged her to refuse to have anything to do with it.

I’m fond of the no-doubt unreliable statistic I read somewhere that most of us can look forward to living for about 10 years longer than our parents, but that we can also look forward to spending the equivalent of about eight of those years in hospitals or doctors’ waiting rooms. If anything, Ehrenreich shows that things are even worse in the United States than they are here in Britain. The U.K. National Health Service is a good deal less profligate with its testing and monitoring than the U.S. medical profession and its insurance companies. But here, too, we can feel both despised and bullied by the medical profession, and bamboozled by its predictions and statistics.

It seems that staying alive and young and active has become a duty and a responsibility each of us ignores at our peril. We may be rewarded with the occasional “wonderful for her age” and punished with contempt for our lethargy, obesity, flabby limbs and muddleheadedness. So how should we live well through all these extra years? Ehrenreich writes books and travels. She “keeps busy”— that awful phrase so often used to mask our uselessness and downgrade our occupations. That said, for many people of our age, those doctor or hospital appointments may be the only dates in their diaries. They may feel at times that their very existence is a burden to their families and friends and, nowadays, to the state. They are often made to feel that they are using up valuable natural and social resources the young could do with, and to no avail. Yet they are discouraged from ending their lives, would find it difficult, and may not wish to do so anyway.

We’re often told to face up to the reality of death, yet no one is quite able to tell us how to. Imagining the world without us in it is beyond most of us, and Ehrenreich admits to its fundamental impossibility. And she’s not encouraging us to welcome death, let alone the possibly disagreeable experiences that may precede it. She does tell us, though—and I doubt this would be prescribed by our National Health Service—about a drug called psilocybin, which dissolves fear, even the fear of death. I’ll go for that.

When I first started with my doctor, he would recommend various medications for blood pressure or cholesterol, the things that doctors are most likely to recommend to older patients. Look, I have to die of something, I would say. This would upset him. I never took the medicine but i did bring my blood pressure down to normal and my cholesterol as well through diet changes. It's not that I want to live forever; it's that as long as I am alive I want to be comfortable in my body and able to navigate in the world on my own. I've done a bit of elder care in my old age and I conclude that it's very possible to live too long and living too long is something to be avoided. The doc and I have come to an understanding that I'm not into medications but I do hope to remain healthy as long as I can, This is what Dr. Andrew Weil recommends: stay healthy as long as you can and pray for a quick decline. And i would add, learn all you can from the experience and believe in an afterlife if it helps.

Posted by Mary Ella Anderson on 2018-04-13 13:41:03

" Eventually the universe will die " Remember, the Earth was flat and the center of the universe. I am sure our know how in this regard will change (evolve), like everything, including us. Can you see, two hydrogen atoms having this conversation, we have come a long way and to predict were it will lead is difficult.

Posted by Alfred Schickentanz on 2018-04-10 14:44:28

Because accidents happen, stars go supernova, or people feel they are done living. Baring any supernatural powers living forever, actual infinity forever, is unlikely to actually happen. Eventually the universe will die it's heat death and all life (even those uploaded to a virtual reality) will die. Eventually the universe will become so cold and depleted of energy that all molecular motion will stop and life will be impossible. All I'm saying is that after billions & billions of years the law of averages will catch up with everyone. Then we will see if there is indeed an afterlife or if it is all just a comforting fairy tale

Posted by ZiggyBoomBox on 2018-04-10 13:46:04

@ZiggyBoomBox, Why should death always be waiting for us. Remember, "Since we have already created our God's to be immortal and almighty, we will now acquire those virtues our self." (I grew up katholik) We are at the point of a "quantum leap" The tools that propelled us from primates to “Homo sapiens sapiens”, will now be developed, so we will evolve to Homo Immortalis OmnipotentThe scientists that are working on this project are not debating if this is possible but if it is desirable. I spend a lot of my time in San Francisco, and the S.F. Chronicle newspaper just advertised a lecture dealing with this subject. Since i want to migrate into orbital space (L5), i have to be immortal. I will avail myself of the "PILL" to grow young again, which should be on the marked in 20 years, Always remember "The only Limit is our Imagination". AD ASTRA AMUSED

Posted by Alfred Schickentanz on 2018-04-10 13:29:06

Lovely. Death will always be waiting for us at the end of our Journey. Why should we blindly accept the mechanical breakdown of our bodies as Gospel ? Didn't those who can centuries before think that their average 35 years on this Earth was the ordained amount and we should just learn to enjoy the time we have ? There are those who say that it's the inevitably of death that gives life it's meaning. They are not wrong but I say lengthening our stay on this mortal plane will not lessen our appreciation for all the beauty & wonder it has to offer. Death will come for us all one way or another, be it in a hundred years or a thousand, by accident or design. If there is an afterlife it will be waiting for us all the same whether we were born yesterday or a millennia ago.

Posted by ZiggyBoomBox on 2018-04-10 12:52:10

I have a different drift on the idea of immortality. We will have goal oriented evolution, leading to Homo immortalis omnipotent.Since we have already created our God's to be immortal and almighty, We will now acquire those virtues our self.

Homo Immortalis Omnipotent

Living in “Infinite Space-Time”! No more “human created secondhand God’s”!

The function assigned to GOD is now available through understandingthe Universe we are part of. We will be the Engineers of our own body chemistry, in the Infinity of Space-Time we can live forever.

Biotechnology will control the “aging process” (we don’t wear out, but are DNA programmed to age), and “involuntary death” will not exist any more.

Many people know that we all have to die, so anything that may undermine that believe will be avoided.

If this would be information confirming that there is life after death, which is something many of us deem possible, we would be more inclined to believe it. The reason is, that once we have formed a believe and have been influenced accordingly, we are more reluctant to reevaluate our acceptance of it.

Since I grew up in a katholik environment I was sure that by following the rules, I would go to heaven and presumable not be dead.

I am now over seventy years old and have lived and loved on five Continents. With the information and experiences I have been exposed to, I have come to the conclusion, that science will make it possible that we can keep on living here, instead of dying and going to heaven.

You may be inclined to believe in some form of life in heaven, because that is the opinion of confirmed authorities. I can assure you, that looking for information based on up to date science, leading to youthfulness and the avoidance of death, will not do any harm, but may give you more time to do so.

You probably ask, what is this about?

It is like a quantum leap. A move to a new state of being. In the material world it would be like the jump from the atom to a mineral. Or from a multicellular organism to a cerebral animal. Or from a culture that depends on an “idealized self projected image (God)”, to provide protection and escape from annihilation , to a society that uses science and technology to solve the problems of sickness and death.

The tools that propelled us from primates to “Homo sapiens sapiens”, will now be developed, so we will evolve to Homo Immortalis Omnipotent.

Of course there will be opposition from institutions that now have the monopoly on “Life after death”. They should not worry, because our need for entertainment will always exist. Even sincere moral and religious disapproval should not divert us from taking this next step in evolution.

Just like the hydrogen atom did not know that it would become the planet we now live on, even though it already contained the basic code leading to the status quo. We will realize that the abilities that we have assigned to our God’s, are now for us to acquire.